Floral Arrangement for Wedding

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  jellykingdom on 12/12/2016 - 09:54

  I can't stress it enough - fake fake fake fake fake flowers. The good ones are astonishingly realistic

  Have a google (they sell on ebay too) for Real Touch flowers. I don't remember if they were silk or latex, but they come in just about every colour and a skilled supplier will colour them to exactly what you want (we had the same colour scheme as you). I would recommend going to a store to look at them first and work out what you want, then its up to you if you go online or not

  I'm not 100% sure on the prices, but i know they weren't over the top, and the other advantage is you can keep them afterwards. We still have my wife's fake bouquet in a vase in the lounge room, and I have my lapel pin in a box with my cufflinks etc

  Other advantages are that they don't wilt or drop leaves or give people hayfever. For e.g my friend had to replace our lapel pins literally 4x in the day during his wedding because he used real flowers.

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    sagrules on 12/12/2016 - 09:59

    Thanks for the advice, will take a look. Which state are you in? Do you know of any stores in Sydney?

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      jellykingdom on 12/12/2016 - 10:02

      Yeah I'm NSW. We were living in Wollongong at the time, and there's a big lot of shops down in Pt Kembla doing the selling of wedding stuffs (which is really frigging weird if you know anything about Pt Kembla, i.e Bluescope steelworks suburb)

      Other than that, there's a big wedding warehouse up near Homebush (?) but i don't remember exactly sorry. There's definitely heaps of discount/wholesale warehouses. I would still recommend seeing a professional first to get some ideas and comments, but you can definitly buy the Real Touch stuff from these discount stores

      I'm pretty crafty so I actually made a couple of the decorative bouquets with some flowers from Spotlight and then some coloured ribbon, but the majority of them were from the proper shop

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  lupiter on 12/12/2016 - 10:38

  If you do want real, do not tell them it's for a wedding, all the prices jump like crazy. Look at what flowers are in season, and consider adding more "cheap filler" i.e. greenery, candles, ribbon, other decorations for the tables. If you have a garden or friends with gardens, consider something like frangipanis and tea lights floating in water on the tables (a friend did this for summer, very pretty), and focus the money on just the bridal bouquet.

  Check with older friends and family, you might find someone who does flower arranging as a hobby and will do it at cost or as a wedding gift (this is what I did, got a lovely bouquet of natives and some pretty garden flowers for the church).

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  nerdycat on 12/12/2016 - 10:42

  I went with Joanne (http://www.joannesflowersgalore.com.au/), shes located in Ryde, my mum has been using her forver and she is really nice. I wanted almost out of season flowers and she was able to find some for me.

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  mlatte on 12/12/2016 - 11:10

  Hi sagrules,

  My business is Le Jardin Florist in Bankstown and we are happy to work with your budget. I have a facebook page with some photos as I'm in the process of updating the website.

  FB link
  https://www.facebook.com/Le-Jardin-Florist-327530698232/?fre…

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    sagrules on 12/12/2016 - 14:01

    I've sent you PM

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  ZippyRoo on 12/12/2016 - 11:25

  I ordered my flowers from a wholesaler and built my own bouquet. The rest I delivered to the restaurant early in the day and the restaurant manager did the arrangements for me. I also gave her vases which are just $1 glasses I got from the Reject Shop but with the white and pink Oriental lilies and the white/peach coloured roses, the arrangements looked wonderful. I think I was also pretty lucky that the restaurant manager was such a lovely and thoughtful lady. By the end of the night most of the arrangements were gone, the guests were all taking them home! I wish I still had photos but it was six years ago and they're all buried in a CD, a USB and somewhere in my hard drive. I took multiple backups but still can't remember where most of them are.

  I did some research on the bouquet and figured out what I wanted and looked up some videos on how to make it. Overall it was actually pretty fun and easy to do. I had around 100 roses and 100 lilies, plus some other small fillers like baby's breathe etc, and from memory it was only $300 something.

  I can't emphasise enough the need to use fake flowers! By the end of the night, the bouquet really just looked pretty sad and the last thing I wanted to do was to throw it and have petals everywhere. So I used a bunch of fake roses for that. Nobody noticed really.

  Good luck and have fun!

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  stratbargain on 12/12/2016 - 11:30

  Don't use fake. They look… well fake. It's only for one day. If the florist uses good, fresh flowers they will look alive and well at the nights end. If you were in Melbourne I'd have some suggestions but it looks like you're in Sydney. Good luck

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  nafe on 12/12/2016 - 13:23

  Speak to Joanne at Sydney Flowers in Ryde - she did my wedding in February this year. She will work to whatever budget you have, recommend what's in season etc etc.

  https://www.sydneyflowers.com.au/
  1300 30 30 31

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  altomic on 12/12/2016 - 18:43

  +1

  I was fortunate when I got married that it was on an extensive rural property with plenty of native flora. I sent my father in law out to collect what he thought was best (his farm, he knew where the best stuff was). He also then constructed the 14 cente pieces. We had a florist make the bridal bouquet and a friend drove it up on the morning.

  If I had to do it in the city? Aldi flowers for the centre pieces (with some random vegetation thrown in to make it look "pretty"